> the upstram projects do not ship the slackware/gentoo/fedora/Suse config
> files (and nobody expects those distros to submit their default config
> files upstream),
Of course they do. If you had followed any major software projects you'd have seen default config fixes from Red Hat, Mandriva, Novell, etc
> so why should you expect Ubunto to do so?
That's Ubuntu's opinion and why it's getting a black eye now.